Steve House - Training Mountain Athletes and Special Operators, Ep. 124

Steve House serves as the managing director, coach, and official mascot of Uphill Athlete, which he co-founded in 2016. He lives in a remote and mountainous corner of Austria with his wife and two sons.

Steve’s biggest coaching challenge was coaching himself. Which was successful enough for him to be called “The greatest climber of his generation” by none other than Reinhold Messner. He was inspired to write down what he learned and originally recruited two other coaches to help him write Training for the New Alpinism while recovering from a near-life-ending fall in 2010. 

He then co-authored  Training for the Uphill Athlete (2018) to fulfill his personal mission to “Teach conventional endurance training theory and practice to mountain athletes.” He retired from professional climbing at the end of 2020 to dedicate himself to family and work full-time on Uphill Athlete.

Steve’s most famous ascent is the 4,500-meter-high Rupal Face, the world's biggest mountain wall, which culminates at the summit of the world's deadliest and 9th-highest mountain: Nanga Parbat. 

In this episode, we talk with Steve about his career, Uphill Athlete’s approach to coaching, and the overlap between mountain athletes and special operators. 

More about Steve and Uphill Athlete:

You can learn more about Uphill Athlete at their website, uphillathlete.com. 

And you can follow them on social media here:

Uphill Athlete Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/uphill_athlete/

Steve’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevehouse10/

Timestamps:
00:00:22 Introduction to Steve House 

00:01:47 What is Significant about Nanga Parbat, "The Naked Mountain"

00:06:51 Grading the Technical Difficulty of Climbing

00:11:18 The "American Certified International Federation of Mountain Guides Associations" Guide 

00:15:23 Overlap Between Climbing and Special Operations Communities

00:18:00 Similarities and Differences Between the Communities

00:30:32 Uphill Athlete Training Mistake 

00:40:37 Base Building Meaning and Development

00:42:44 Aerobic Threshold to Regulate Training

00:51:00 Building Aerobic Volume

00:58:59 What to Prioritize During Training

01:02:09 Misunderstanding V02 Max in Training

01:09:13 Ventilatory Threshold Breakpoint

01:15:10 Ten Athletes, Ten Results

01:18:03 What's Next for Uphill Athlete?

01:21:23 Best and Worst Advice Ever Received

01:23:44 Book Recommendations

01:24:59 Outro